In the processing of whole chickens and other poultry through a poultry processing plant for the cleaning and cut-up of the birds into parts and for packaging and delivery of the parts to retail food stores and restaurants, etc., it is highly desirable to perform as many of the processing steps such as defeathering, evisceration, cut-up, and packaging, as is practical with automated machinery in order to minimize the expense and manual handling of the birds and to uniformly cut apart the birds.
A practice has developed wherein the birds are carried in spaced series along a poultry processing line with each bird suspended by its legs from an overhead conveying system, and as many of the automated processing steps as practical are performed on the birds as they move in series along the processing line. For example, the birds can be defeathered, decapitated, opened, and eviscerated as the birds are suspended by their legs and are advanced in series progressively along a poultry processing line. It is further desired that the birds be cut into sections while traveling on the overhead conveying system along the processing line to further reduce the amount of manual handling of the birds during processing. An on-line cut up system of this general type is disclosed in my prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,574,429. However, because of the difficulties in accurately cutting the birds and because some of the desired cuts are difficult to make with automated equipment, it is still common practice to remove the birds from the overhead conveyor system prior to cutting them apart.
One of the problems with prior art poultry cut up machines of the type that cut the birds while the birds are suspended by their legs from an overhead conveying system is that it is difficult to accurately position and maintain the birds in proper alignment with the cutting elements of the cut-up machine so that proper cuts are made in the birds. When birds of different sizes enter a cut up machine, the larger or smaller birds tend to approach the cutting elements in positions that are too high or too low for the cutting elements. As a result, the cutting elements of the cut up equipment tend to miss the desired cutting zones at the joints of the carcasses of the birds and tend to form improperly cut parts and sometimes cut through the bones of the birds. Engagement and cutting of the bones by the cutting elements creates bone fragments or bone splinters that can become lodged in the meat of the poultry parts, which can pose a serious health risk to the end consumer.
Therefore, it can be seen that it would be desirable to provide an improved, reliable and accurate method for automatically separating the parts of previously eviscerated poultry carcasses as the carcasses are moved in series along an overhead conveyor system with the joints between the sections of the poultry carcasses being opened and aligned with the cutting elements of the cut-up equipment to eliminate the risk of engaging and splintering the bones of the joints of the poultry carcasses with the cutting element and to avoid further manual handling of the birds during the separation process.